The Regional Corrections Board met Monday, April 14, at 9:00 a.m. at the Polk County Justice Center. After approval of the March meeting minutes, Executive Director Andrew Larson gave his departmental monthly statistical reports review. “Jail continues to see lower numbers than we have seen over the last three or four years, so for March, the average daily population was 131,” says Larson. “That puts us at about 130, which is our average daily for the first quarter of the year. That’s really driven by lower numbers of our local partners, so Polk, Norman, Red Lake, the Polk numbers have really come down a lot, and that is really what’s driving that reduction.” Larson says they are still seeing healthy numbers of per diems, or those being housed for other jurisdictions. He says they averaged 50 per diem on an average daily basis during the month of March.
Things continue to trend upwards at the Juvenile Center as far as the numbers go. “Our numbers have really been good,” says Larson. “We’ve been able to really fill a need throughout the entire state. So, for the month of March, there was an average daily population of 9.8; 5.5 on our residential side and 4.3 on our secure detention side. Thirty percent of the bed days on our residential side were for member counties, 70 percent were for counties from across the state.” On the Secure side Larson says that they had placements from Nobles County, Blue Earth and Marshall in March which really highlights the need in the state to find beds for kids that are having mental issues, need to be taken out of the home due to an unsafe environment, or have delinquency charges and need to be in a secure detention setting.
The board went into a short closed session that had to do with a leave request, and once the meeting was reopened, Larson talked with the board about personnel issues. “We do have some new appointments and some resignations. Also, as I discussed with the board, we are seeing staff reach that one-year mark, which designates their probationary period, which is a good thing. They are here and they are sticking around,” says Larson. “They are getting through that tough part in the job where things typically start to get easier after that one-year mark, and we did have several as well as some internal promotions.” Retention, Larson says, is key. Even though they are fully staffed at times, many of those staff members are often in training. It has gotten better, though Larson reported, and currently, five staff members are still in training.
Red River Valley Juvenile Center Program Director, Kyle Allen, presented an update to the board on Monday. “He talked similarly to what I talked about, just expanding our footprint, some of the challenges with some rule changes within the state of Minnesota,” says Larson. “Specifically, safety separation and all of the record keeping that’s required for that. Kyle has also recently completed some certification and suicide prevention training. He and other juvenile center directors will now be training agencies around the state on QPR.” QPR Larson explained that it is question, persuade, and refer. This new model will be used in training in Juvenile facilities, as well as probation and jails.
The board was updated on a DWI Court Grant Amendment and an Intergovernmental Agreement with the United States Marshals Service. “I did update the board on some grant agreement amendments, we got some training money for DUI court so we did have an amendment there and also an amendment to our US Marshall Contract, just making some language changes, much of that driven by some of the executive orders coming out of the federal side of things.” The DWI Court Grant Amendment added $3,000 for DWI training participation by NWRCC staff.
Larson also brought to the board’s attention, without getting into a lot of detail, some Legislative Bills that are in the works that could have a potential impact on Corrections. “There are several Legislative pieces in various stages that have all been laid over, but there are several things we are kind of keeping our eye on,” says Larson. “Some of them are for some increases in Mental Health Funding for juvenile detention facilities, one of the others is a bill to delay the implementation of sun-setting of corrections fees and that kind of co-insides with another community supervision funding bill and the last one that I briefed the board on was some proposed legislation to eliminate the Community Crime and Violence Prevention Grant program which could have an impact on us because we use that for some of our pre-trial supervision program. Just things we are really keeping an eye on with hope that we won’t be impacted as much as I fear we may be.”
There will be a Tri-County Correction Center Advisory Board Meeting on Friday, May 16, at 12:00 p.m., and the next Regional Corrections Board Meeting will be on Monday, May 12, 2025.
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